Albert Baggarley
Born: 1884 - Hackney, Middlesex.
Died: 1917 - Baghdad, Iraq.
Debt of Honour Register In Memory of
A Baggarley Private 6685 2nd Bn., Dorsetshire Regiment who
died on Tuesday 27 March 1917, Aged 32 .
Additional Information:
Son of Emma Baggarley, of 78, Pownall Rd., Queen's Rd.,
Dalston, London, and the late Benjamin Baggarley.
Cemetery: Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery, Iraq Grave or
Reference Panel Number: XXI. Y. 2.
Location: Baghdad (North Gate) War Cemetery is 800 metres
beyond the North Gate of the City of Baghdad on the
south-eastern side of the road to Baguba.
Visiting Information:
The Commission strongly advises that the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office should be
contacted before attempting to visit Iraq.
Their details are as follows:
Travel Advice Unit Consular Division Foreign and
Commonwealth Office Old Admiralty Building London SW1A 2AF
Tel: 0207 008 0232/0233 Fax: 0207 008 0164 Website: http://www.fco.gov.uk/
Opening Times: Monday to Friday 09.30 - 16.00
Historical Information: In 1914, Baghdad was the
headquarters of the Turkish Army in Mesopotamia. It was
the ultimate objective of the Indian Expeditionary Force
'D' and the goal of the force besieged and captured at Kut
in 1916. The city finally fell in March 1917, but the
position was not fully consolidated until the end of
April. Nevertheless, it had by that time become the
Expeditionary Force's advanced base, with two stationary
hospitals and three casualty clearing stations. The North
Gate Cemetery was begun In April 1917 and has been greatly
enlarged since the end of the First World War by graves
brought in from other burial grounds in Baghdad and
northern Iraq, and from battlefields and cemeteries in
Anatolia where Commonwealth prisoners of war were buried
by the Turks. At present, 4,142 Commonwealth casualties of
the First World War are commemorated by name in the
cemetery, many of them on special memorials. Unidentified
burials from this period number 2,729. The cemetery also
contains the grave of Lieutenant General Sir Stanley
Maude, Commander-in-Chief of the Mesopotamian
Expeditionary Force, who died at Baghdad in November 1917
and the memorial to the 13th Division which he commanded.
A memorial to the 6th Battalion Loyal (North Lancashire)
Regiment was brought into the cemetery from the banks of
the Diyala River in 1947. During the Second World War,
Baghdad was again an objective of Commonwealth forces. The
20th Indian Infantry Brigade reached the city from Shaiba
by the Euphrates route on 12 June 1941 and the 21st Indian
Infantry Brigade, part of the 13th Duke of Connaught's Own
Lancers, together with the 157th Field Regiment, Royal
Artillery, arrived on 19 June via the Tigris. An advanced
base was established later near the city and remained in
use until 1946. Most of the 296 Commonwealth servicemen of
the Second World War buried in the cemetery died of
illness or by accident when serving with Paiforce. Again,
a number of the graves were brought in from other burial
grounds. Within the cemetery is the Baghdad (North Gate)
(Khanaqin) Memorial, commemorating 104 Commonwealth and
439 Polish servicemen of the Second World War buried in
Khanaqin War Cemetery which, owing to difficulty of
access, could not be properly maintained. A memorial has
also been erected at Khanaqin. The North Gate Cemetery
also contains 127 war graves of other nationalities from
both wars, 100 of them Turkish, and 41 non-war graves.
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Ernest Sidney Baggarley
Born: 1892 - Lambeth, Surrey.
Died: 1916 - Somme, Picardie, France.

A private who fell along with 50 killed, 290 wounded and
188 missing other ranks and 6 killed, 5 wounded, and 5
missing officers, on the first day of the battle of the
Somme, from 1/9th Battalion, London Regiment, Queen
Victoria Riffles.
Ernest was born in the Lambeth Workhouse, on 12th
November 1892, to his unmarried parents Rebecca Baggarley
and Henry Turner, hence Ernest was given his mother's
surname.
In both the 1901 and 1911 Census returns, where his
surname is recorded as Turner, Ernest is shown as living
with his parents in Hackney and Camberwell respectively.
These returns also indicate that his parents were married
but no marriage record or certificate has ever been
located and Rebecca's Father, John Baggarley, 1834 to
1913, went to the effort of adding a codicil to Rebecca's
death certificate, of November 1911, swearing that his
daughter had never married.
In the 1911 Census Ernest is recorded as a Card Boxmakers
Assistant.
On 1 July 1916, supported by a French attack
to the south, thirteen divisions of Commonwealth forces
launched an offensive on a line from north of Gommecourt
to Maricourt. Despite a preliminary bombardment lasting
seven days, the German defenses were barely touched and
the attack met unexpectedly fierce resistance. Losses were
catastrophic and with only minimal advances on the
southern flank, the initial attack was a failure. In the
following weeks, huge resources of manpower and equipment
were deployed in an attempt to exploit the modest
successes of the first day. However, the German Army
resisted tenaciously and repeated attacks and counter
attacks meant a major battle for every village, copse and
farmhouse gained. At the end of September, Thiepval was
finally captured. The village had been an original
objective of 1 July. Attacks north and east continued
throughout October and into November in increasingly
difficult weather conditions. The Battle of the Somme
finally ended on 18 November with the onset of winter. In
the spring of 1917, the German forces fell back to their
newly prepared defences, the Hindenburg Line, and there
were no further significant engagements in the Somme
sector until the Germans mounted their major offensive in
March 1918. The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the
Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000
officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African
forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918
and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated
died between July and November 1916. The memorial also
serves as an Anglo-French Battle Memorial in recognition
of the joint nature of the 1916 offensive and a small
cemetery containing equal numbers of Commonwealth and
French graves lies at the foot of the memorial. The
memorial, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, was built between
1928 and 1932 and unveiled by the Prince of Wales, in the
presence of the President of France, on 31 July 1932. The
dead of other Commonwealth countries who died on the Somme
and have no known graves are commemorated on national
memorials elsewhere.
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William Charles Baggarley
Born: 1894 - Camberwell, Surrey.
Died: 1915 - Gallipoli, Turkey.
William was born in Camberwell, where his
father was an Insurance agent. But sometime after 1901 and
before 1911 the whole family moved to Chichester where
William worked as an assistant in his father's refreshment
bar.
However William, who had attended the National
School, Camberwell, emigrated on his own to Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia at the age of 20 and enlisted, on 12
January 1915, as a Private, regimental number 1909, with
the 6th Battalion, 5th Regiment in the Australian Army.
They embarked from Melbourne, aboard the HMAT
A20 Horaorata, on 17th April 1915 for Gallipoli in Egypt
where William, now aged 21, was killed in action on 7th
August that same year and is buried in the Shrapnal Valley
Cemetery, Anzac, Plot II, Row A, Grave 44. William is
listed on Panel 45 of the Australian War Memorial.
Passenger transcript details
Name: Mr W Baggarley
Date of departure: 17 June 1914
Port of departure: London
Passenger destination port: Melbourne, Australia
Passenger destination: Melbourne, Australia
Date of Birth: 1894
Age: 20
Marital status:
Sex: Male
Occupation: Farm Student
Passenger recorded on: Page 12 of 25
The following is taken from the Aldingbourne Parish
Magazine of October 1915; below the list of Regulars,
Reservists and Recruits:-
William Charles Baggarley, the second son of Mr and Mrs J
Baggarley of Norton, who was 21 years of age last March,
emigrated to Melbourne, Australia, in June 1914. On
reaching the Colony he became a member of the Y.M.C.A.
Volunteers being called for, to fight for the mother
country, he enrolled with the 6th Batt, of the 5th
Reinforcement, Australian Imperial Forces, and with
members of the Young Men's Christian Association, formed a
part of H.M. Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Egypt.
On leaving Australia he had a good send off, and was
presented with a copy of the New Testament.
He did his training at Heliopolis and Cairo in Egypt and
was soon promoted to the rank of lance-corporal. On
completion of training, his battalion sailed from
Alexandria on August 1st, 1915, and landed on the
Gallipoli peninsula, when they immediately went into the
fighting line, suffering very serverly in killed and
wounded. Among those who fell in action on this memorable
7th August, 1915, appeared the name William C. Baggarley.
In a letter to his mother just before his
death, William told her not to worry about him, for
he was only doing his duty in fighting for the Old
Country, as every loyal Englishman should do, and if he
should fall, it would be in a just cause, and death would
have no terror for him.
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